Time to Spare

I am really enjoying Judy’s Quilt along, that’s when I give myself enough time to do the sewing. This time I have finished the latest step with time to spare. I guess it is back to when you are really busy you tend to get more done.

On Thursday I am off shopping in the morning with my mother and then the rest of the day I have the wonderful company of my grandson. I pick him up from nursery and enjoy his chat and play until his Mum comes home from work. My husband and I are off to Durham on Friday to pick youngest son up from University for the Easter break, staying over in a room in the ‘Castle’ and then travelling home on Saturday with a car full of gear. Much of which I guess will need washing when we reach home. Sunday, Mothers Day in England, I have been invited to my eldest son’s, which is a great pleasure, as I won’t have to cook the family meal.

So you see I won’t have time to do any stitching for the next few days and knowing that today has been a ‘get it done’ day. One of the results of that is that I have finished step four of the Quilt along. I did get a lot of other things done too, like the teaching samples for next week, which is also a great relief as they quite often don’t get done until Monday morning.

I am getting to like this one,

By the skin of my teeth

Monday morning and the sun is shining, getting ready for work I spied these little fellows in the garden.



And these were a gift from my grandson two years ago for ‘mothers’ day, still bringing me a smile.


A bright spot always raises the spirits and there is nothing better than the bright hope of spring around the corner




But onto why this blog is by the skin of my teeth. I had been continuing with the cutting and piecing of Judy’s Bears in the Farmhouse Quilt along and really enjoying the progress I was making, despite the last few days being so busy that I had only waved at my sewing machine in passing. I had also been looking around at other blogs and seeing the colour choices other participants had chosen and half wishing that I had chosen a more exciting focus fabric. My fabrics are decidedly subdued even by my standards. I thought I would sew a few blocks this morning and was thinking that if I did a few each day they would soon be completed so I would get the next set of instructions. I then thought that I would just check Judy’s last email to see when this stage should be finished. That’s when the panic set in, they had to be finished by today, Monday 9^th March and I was just about to set off to work.

This is where I got to by teatime.





And with a bit of concentration here’s where I am now, luckily I have just finished the second step in time, whew, by the skin of my teeth.




They could be more exciting but I still like them. What do you think so far?

Half squares finished

Just checking in with my finished half square triangles from Judy’s Quilt along, you can see my fabrics here and if you keep checking you will see whether I change my mind or not.

I managed to cut all the squares at 2 7/8” in one go and marked the light squares across the diagonal. This is my preferred method of making half square triangles, there are others but I like to do it this way. Stitching took a while but not too long to get discouraged and they were quickly cut on the diagonal. There is supposed to be 192 of these little darlings


Pressing didn’t take long, they soon started to pile up.



And finally 192 half square triangles (well there was a few more than I needed, more like 220, but they will get used up in another quilt someday) all ready for the next stage. Thanks Judy.

A finish and more bags

I have finally finished quilting another quilt. This one was started about two years ago and was layered and pinned ready for quilting but because I was busy at the time it was popped in a drawer and like a lot of things, out of sight is out of mind, it was therefore forgotten. But a reminder came when I realised that I was teaching the ‘Card Trick’ block in class next week. So I dug it out and decided that it would make a good teaching sample. Simple free machine quilting finished this one off and made a space in the drawer which I promptly filled with another couple of tops that maybe will be quilted sometime…………………

‘A Christmas card trick'

And a detail photo.

Talking of finishing, I really must show you the rest of the bags I made with the BQL monthly challenge for 2008.

The month of June’s had lots of flying geese and a really nice wide base; I popped a couple of pockets in this one.





Here’s July’s, which was not my favourite but ideal for keeping your knitting in as it was a rather deep bag.






And this is August’s, which I really didn’t like making and liked even less when I had finished it. It was a simple clutch bag pattern and once again Kandy from BQL made the instructions quite clear but it wasn't my personal preference.



Only three more to show you all.

Catching up

I thought that I would continue my blogging return by showing you a few things I have finished, some old and one new.

The first three are bags from the BQL bag challenge from last year, I did show you the first couple of months but then the rest seemed to slip through the net.

This is the bag for March



And this one is for April



And the final one for today is for May




Lastly this is a quilt that is fleece backed that I made for my grandson at the weekend. By coincidence you will see some of the squares of fabric I received from Sandy in Australia. It was a wonderful parcel and went to good use in this cuddly quilt. By the way, would you guess he loves the colour orange.

I'm back

Well fellow bloggers, I am back, and you have Judy to thank for that. I really wanted to join her Quilt Along and the most important rule is you either send photo’s of your progress to her or show the photo’s on your own blog. It was the nudge I needed to get back into blogging. Here are my fabric choices for the Bears in the Farmhouse quilt Judy is going to get us all to do. Thanks Judy.



Don’t think that I have been very far away, I have been practicing my Lurker skills, spending way too much time reading all the other blogs and now I think I have it down to a fine art so here I am again. I have been busy and I will promise to show you some of the things I have been doing but for now I will leave you a couple of photo’s of our garden showing the recent snow falls.

Parcel

Wow, what a wonderful postman came to my door last week. I wondered why he was knocking, as I wasn’t expecting a parcel. I was so wrong, it was a parcel all the way from Australia from Sandy.
I still can’t believe that I can sit here on my computer in my own home and chat to people on the other side of the world. Sandy lives in South Australia and a couple of months ago I was reading her blog, I like to keep an eye on about 100 bloggers that post quite regularly, and I saw that is was her 100th post and she was having a giveaway. That is quite a lot of posts and cannot go by without some sort of celebration or comment. A couple of weeks later Sandy emailed me to let me know that she had picked out my name and I had won a squishy that she would post off to me soon.

I was quite excited and last week the squishy arrived by Airmail. What a super package to greet me in the morning. Opening it didn’t take a lot of time……….(ripping envelopes seems to come easy to me) and reading the card was my first joy. Sandy had written a really nice message to me. Inside was a prettily wrapped gift and as you can see from the photos loads and loads of character fabrics for me to play around with and maybe make another quilt for my grandson.

Among all these wonderful fabrics were some really good funnies as well, thanks so much Sandy, they are wonderful.

Now for the bad news, over the last few weeks blogger has been such a pain and while trying to sort it out I lost most of the blogs I have been keeping in touch with. Amongst these, and there are quite a few, is Sandy’s blog. So, Sandy I do hope you are checking in here now and again and will see my thanks and also get in touch. It is surprisingly hard to get back those blogs that which you have been watching once they are lost and I am now spending more time searching than reading. Very interesting.